As a reader of fanfiction I wanted to pose a question to writers...is it hard to introduce a character of another "race" to your stories? Is there a certain way or research that has to be done to write the character properly?

Reason I ask, is on another site I read a series of Inuyasha fanfiction...where his extended family developed...with each new Saga of his family finding their mates, i thought wow it would be cool if an African American character to could be added to the mix. When I emailed the author she told me she didn't know enough about Black people to write them correctly.

This stumped me because being black, I know there are some things we might do differently, but no so much that it is differnt from writting any other culture. I mean black people especially in the US share a lot of the same customs and cultural upbringing as everyone else.

so I wasn't sure if I should be offened, since she took the time to find out about other cultures, or is it just too hard to write about black people...

Thanks,

Mel

That's a great question...I had to think about it for a minute lol

As a writer, I've never had to look up ethnic info to create a character of another ethnic group. Diseases, regional background, yes...but cultural information is a new idea to me. I guess it depends on the writer and the story. I would have to read the story in order to see how much ethnic background she puts into her current characters to gauge if she does to her research and even then it would just be a speculation.

I don;t think it was meant to be offensive; maybe she/he lives in a region where African Americans aren't prevalent...and doesn't know how to write the ethnicity into the story. I, however, have friends that are black, and it would be easy for me...but say I wanted to write a story with Indian culture...which I don;t have a friend or have never had the pleasure of meeting someone of that culture...I would need to do my research to properly portray the character without offending anyone.

Does this help and/or make sense? lol sorry if I rambled

I doubt it was meant to be offensive. She maybe afraid of offending someone, so she chooses not to introduce race too much into it.

Personally, I like the idea and thought before of writing a story with characters of various races. Like you, I don't see that there's too much of a difference in upbringing.

Thanks Sesshyrose!

It just seemed odd to me because most of these additional InuYasha characters live in America so their story doesn't have a lot of Japanese Cultural references. But because I am not a writer, I can't gauge how hard it would be to create a new character.

She is a good writier, which is why I continue to read the stories....I had just hoped after 2 or 3 generations of new InuYasha characters as family members that maybe someone like me would have a chance at some of that Yummy InuTashio bloodline...LOL

Thanks for your thoughts and views as a writer!

O.O! That really is a great question! Well personally I think it would depend on the setting of the story, like Modern Day A/U with trains, automobiles etc or the Feudal Era with the historical period gorgeousness as per the Inuyasha universe.

It likely really depends on how detailed the character (especially if the author uses an ethnic background) is. That also like SesshyRose said depends on the story too. For example, if the story is Feudal period, the author would need to consider cultures and technology of the time, so stuff like mobile phones, radios, and cars would most likely be out. However that likely depends on how accurate the author is intending to be to the time period too.

Cultures too are based on more than just ethnicity as well. If the author wants to be fair, and accurate they might need to consider cultural dress, use of slang, language, and even voice accents. I bet North-American accents aren't the same as Canadian, or South American accents, that kind of thing. Like Remy from X-Men has a deliciously crisp cajun accent in the comics, and most of the fanfiction too (cajun? I can't spell it!)

Plus if the story is set in modern times, say an A/U (alternate universe) it might be a good idea to know about rural, urban, and suburban communities where the character might be set in/have a likely background from. Rural communities are usually quite different from urban, and suburban such as being a country bumpkin to a city-slicker with urban street-smarts.

To do an ethnic character real justice it's best to know your stuff, or at least be pretty familiar with it. Consider that it would be odd to have a martian posing as an elephant if its green, and has diddly-bobs on its head.

~ Pyre

What I'm thinking here- being born and raised in NYC and the lone white person in a large group of multi-ethnic friends (and even then only partly so 'cause I have native american ancestry) I never really thought about it before, I suppose because growing up here it's unrealistic to narrow your range of vision to a single culture, race or ethnicity. In my original fictions the supporting characters are of varied ethnicity as well- black, mediteranean, Asian, Celtic, Polynesian, you name it and it'll probably be in there somewhere- and maybe I really didn't think about it 'cause that dynamic is loosely based on my real life in which my best friends are African American, Haitian, Asian and Puerto Rican.

I'm not sure you should take offense to that, but it's hard to tell how to take what was said. When it comes to people, we're all usually most comfortable writing what we know. It's entirely possible she simply lives in an area that's prodominantly one culture or ethnic group, so she doesn't think she'd be able to portray someone of a 'culture' she's never really met before. She could simply be afraid to offend anyone by making a character of a particular race and then assigning them attributes that readers might think 'don't fit' or, depending on the attributes, find upsetting.

I think- at least this is my view- that there's 2 different ways of studying people. One is to research the culture & history via books, internet, what have you. Two is to interact with and observe real people.

That being said . . . again, I'm iffy on that, I don't know if you should be offended or if you should just *shrug* consider that maybe she honestly doesn't know any black people. <_<

Okay, so this question stumped me for a bit.

I don't think it's hard to write about black people, it's just a thing with society of getting things wrong and expecting backlash. At least, that may be part of it.

It would be hard for one to do research on black people. I say this because if you were to start searching, there are many sites that down the race and pull up a host of ignorance. You would have to sift through false information for hours before you found something even remotely relevant to the culture at all.

I agree that those of us who live in the US share a lot of customs and there isn't a big difference. I suppose it would be up to preference or knowledge, at that point. It's hard to say whether you should be offended or not. I think it's natural to get offended first, as I would have myself. But if you take a few moments you'll realize that, as SesshysRose has said, she may not live in a region that is predominantly or even somewhat black. She's probably just not interested and the best you can do is move on to someone who would be, y'know?

...I'm not even sure my response is relevant anymore. LOL I hope I helped a little.

Freya Ishtar wrote:
maybe she honestly doesn't know any black people. <_<

I don't honestly know any black people. o/
But I don't live in the States to begin with, and my country - similar to Japan - is largely homogenous in nature. People of diverse backgrounds are increasing, but it's still a LONG way to multiculturalism.

Personally, the idea of cultural differences fascinates me, also because you learn new things about your own culture and yourself as well, when you discuss with someone from another culture, and hear what is different there. Bringing in characters of varying ethnicities would as such have so much potential for enriching the story, of course, it would be more natural to introduce these characters if the story is set in the US, or another multicultural country, rather than in Japan.

But I think this might be a case of political correctness going overboard, and being afraid of possibly offending someone.

Fanfiction might be a difficult avenue for you if you mean to seek out a multi-cultural story. Most people who write fanfiction are newly-fledged writers and don't have the experience yet to really write much beyond their perspectives or the perspectives established by the manga/anime. This is why there are a good number of high school AU fics. It's what the writers know and thus feel comfortable with

I have to agree with you though. There isn't enough global representation in fanfiction and maybe you can help change that. I myself did intend to put in black character in my unfinished story, but I haven't had time to work on it.

I'm not recommending you read it, because it's kind of an ugly story so far, but in my story "Trail Diary" Jakotsu is black. He's a really loveable character, too, but maybe more worldly than what you are looking for...

knifethrower wrote:
I'm not recommending you read it, because it's kind of an ugly story so far, but in my story "Trail Diary" Jakotsu is black. He's a really loveable character, too, but maybe more worldly than what you are looking for...

I will thanks! A long time ago I remember reading a fiction and FF.net where Sesshomaru was dating a black girl...I can't remember the name of it though...but it was what initated the idea in my head...cause we know I love me some Sesshomaru and it was set in modern times, and was pretty realistic...I wish I could find that author again to see how it ends!

Well I for one have been developing a fiction which will be published very soon and it includes a few black characters . I'm not black but It wasn't difficult to develop them at all, they're just people like everyone else. I'm not Japanese either and yet I write about Kagome and Sesshomaru. Guess it just depends on how comfortable the author feels about it.

I don't know if you meant strictly fanfiction or original fiction. There is a website that hosts original fiction with black women as the main characters. Just look up Valent Chamber